<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Sam Wilson's Phantastmagorical Uprising Adventures: Part 2 by AgentMal</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29128527">Sam Wilson's Phantastmagorical Uprising Adventures: Part 2</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMal/pseuds/AgentMal'>AgentMal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Inspired by Mad Max Series (Movies), Kidnapping, Magic, Multi, Talking Animals, Torture, magical transformation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:15:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,409</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29128527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMal/pseuds/AgentMal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What does Captain America do when the United States of America has fallen apart?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki/Sam Wilson, Loki/Sam Wilson/OFC</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Banned Together Bingo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam comes across some Mad Max shit.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>BTB2020 fill for Humans Gone Wild</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The year is 2022. In the 2 years since The Dissolution, Sam has traveled from settlement to settlement, helping where he could. Every place was different. In Chicago there was constant power, and running water, and a local form of internet, though it was still cut off from the major services and any connectivity to the outside world. Meanwhile Detroit was a wasteland and Minneapolis — when he left it — was an almost medieval-level agrarian-focused township with limited power and water by allotment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam, on his motorcycle, was heading west, toward Montana and Idaho. He had picked up rumors that between the Rockies and the Cascade Range things were wild. As in, Wild West kind of wild. Or possibly, and he hoped not, Lord of the Flies wild.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was after passing through Big Sky that Sam got his first glimpses of how it really was. There were people with spikes on their cars, with armed roving caravans protecting the region’s ranchers and herds. He’d seen similar elsewhere, but here things were dustier, dirtier, the weaponry mounted on vehicles a little too impractical, the white paint on people’s faces a little too war-like. It was giving him Mad Max vibes he didn’t like. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seventy miles past that, he came across a cage made from cow bones and wire that had a person inside, who was put there as punishment and warning for any on the road: turn back or die. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam offered her water, which she took gratefully, but when he went to break her out she said to leave her in there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This wasn’t a death sentence. They’ll be back to get me tomorrow, and if I’m not here I won’t ever be allowed back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No offense, ma’am, but you could come with me to the next place after that would take you, or beyond. Why would you want to go back?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looked at him, hard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because that’s where my kids are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam considered her, seriously. “Ma’am, if you want, I could maybe go in there, help you get your kids out, help you get started somewhere else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now she scowled at him, “You don’t understand. My kids are there and it’s my home and it’s their home. And it’s a good home, a strong home. You have to have strong rules to keep your home strong, and rules are weak unless they have strong punishments. I won’t die out here, but I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> think twice before sneaking someone else’s grain rations again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shocked, and then entirely nonplussed, Sam offered to leave some water with her— which she refused— and then made to continue on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As was her job, she again warned him off from heading the direction he had been, toward her settlement. She said to take the road south and gave him directions to go around her people’s territory. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>From what else he picked up from her, and some of the colorful language she applied to him while telling it, he gathered he didn’t want to cross paths with these folks anyway. He took some notes on his journal, noted the entry in his paper Thomas Guide (which were worth triple their weight in gasoline, in many places), and headed in the way she had directed.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam comes to a city where everyone left has been turned into an animal.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>BTB2020 fill for the square Talking Pigs</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The detour from his original route took him past what used to be Idaho Falls. It was a beautiful area, somehow more beautiful if also haunting with its abandoned streets, broken windows, grass and other plants growing through cracks in cement and pavement, critters making homes in open, abandoned buildings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam had passed plenty of places like this in his travels, and noted them all down, and when he had access to power and could power his phone or camera, he’d take pictures. He had a little solar charger he could use for a few of his smaller devices, but he had become so accustomed to living without them he hardly bothered with it anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This place, though, felt different. It felt like the deer standing in the middle of an abandoned gas station was watching him. Not just staring at him defensively, </span>
  <em>
    <span>watching</span>
  </em>
  <span> him. It felt like the collection of squirrels running across power lines were following him, chittering as if they were relaying information about him, as if they were the patrol. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he turned a corner, and there was a pig, a horse, a goat, and a bobcat standing in the middle of the road, shoulder to shoulder, staring at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam slowed down, turned off his bike but kept it in neutral, and dismounted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello?” he asked, tentatively. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello back!” answered the goat, rudely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OH kay,” Sam muttered to himself, “So this is where the hallucinations start.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a hallucination,” said a voice to his right. He startled, and looked over and then up. There was a falcon sitting on top of a street light, staring at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” came a human-sounding voice from it, “that was me, I’m talking to you. And so are they.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bewildered, Sam turned back to the four creatures assembled before him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Welcome to Idaho Falls,” said the horse. “We don’t mean you any harm. We’re the welcome crew. Been a long time since anyone came through from this direction.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” muttered the falcon, “most coming from the east make the mistake of hearing north and are ‘taken to the thunderdome.’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That evening, after several hours of him asking many questions and getting not-nearly-good-enough answers in return, he found himself in a sort of cafeteria having dinner with dozens of animals. Some were barnyard animals, some were of the kinds that occurred in the wild here, some were dogs and cats. There were a few parrots. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What had happened, they had reported, was that after the town got cut off, and lost power and eventually running water, more and more started drinking the local groundwater. Except some of the local wells tasted better than others. One area had water that was famously good-tasting, and while people used whatever was most convenient to wash and clean, they would go stand in line to fill jugs of the “glancing water,” as the called it, to drink and use in cooking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After several weeks, the people who lived closest to that well started to turn into animals. Then those who had been coming from elsewhere to drink it did, and eventually everyone in the town did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Specifically, we turned into animals that were around us,” said Margot, a former receptionist in her 40s that was now part of her sector’s security since she was in the form of a wild boar. Others on her security team included a few coyotes, a handful of larger dogs, some raptors like the falcon Sam had met earlier, and a single mountain lion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So Steve who works with horses turned into a horse (you met him in the welcome crew), people who had house cats had even odds of becoming a cat, and one of the rangers turned into a moose. Plenty of people turned into wild animals, and there was no telling about that, but then they always said that wild animals are all around us and we don’t know. I guess that was true. Some people put bets on what this or that person would turn into, as it was happening.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you think it was caused by the water in that well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes and no,” said Mike, who was a high school linebacker who was also now in the form of a pig. Sam was eating at the pig ‘table’ of the cafeteria since they were eating vegetables and cooked meat, while most of the other food wasn’t human-compatible. The ‘barn animal’s’ area had hay and alfalfa and oats, there was a massive open bag of birdseed that dozens of song birds were pecking at, and over in the corner were the larger mammal predators chowing down on hunks of raw meat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On the one hand,” said Mike between bites, “Those whose water came entirely from that well changed first, probably because they were using it to drink and make food and bathe and wash their clothes and water their lawns and fill their pools if they had pools. So they were the most exposed. And those who were less exposed to the water happened later.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And later and later, the less of that water they had had,” added Margot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But the thing is,” said Jean, a soccer mom type who was also now in pig form, “It eventually happened to people who had never had the water at all, including people who never had any water from the tap.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My uncle was the kind of prick who had all his water delivered by Sparklets,” said Mike, “and that didn’t stop him from turning into an owl. It didn’t happen until 3 weeks after the rest of the family, but it happened.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some people tried to leave, but then found themselves in an animal form down the road and then headed back. We figure as long as we’re all together we can protect each other."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam enters this animal community and learns more over a meal. But every answer leads to more questions...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“But this is magic, right? Like, it has to be magic,” said Sam. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Different people have different theories,” said Margot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My uncle says it was the 5G,” said Mike, at which caws and snorts and rude calls erupted, as well as human voices telling Mike what they thought of that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some people think it’s punishment from God,” said a gray tabby having kibble with several dozen other cats. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s one theory,” said Margot, dismissively.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was Circe, She saw the chaos on the earthly plain and decided to stake a claim here,” said Vanderbuilt, a great bernard.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Praise Circe!” said someone Sam didn’t spot, and soon scattered people (they were still people, even if they were trapped as animals) were repeating that all over the hall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a shrine to Circe at what used to be Lincoln Park,” said the tabby, conversationally, “and there’s talk of picking a building to rededicate as her temple.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But if the cult of Circe gets a temple, then the cult of the Green Man should get a temple!” This was said by a pig Sam had been introduced to but hadn’t remembered the name of. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Other people chimed in about that, and Sam gathered that there was a sizeable following for Circe in town, and lesser but still popular followings for a number of other deities like the Green Man or Maui. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A huge but still adolescent bear, with the voice of a child, said, “It was a spell, cast by the sorcerer past the falls.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hen came over to the bear and said in a matronly voice, “Macie, what did I tell you about talking about the sorcerer?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But mooom!” complained the bear, “I saw him! When I was looking for a cave for myself, I saw him in the wilds!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I won’t have you telling tall tales,” said the chicken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of this was fascinating to Sam, who was as interested in the mystery of how this situation came to be as he was in the logistics these people had clearly worked out among themselves for keeping in food and shelter despite </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> different needs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thread of conversation around him continued to focus on the issue of buildings being designated as temples, and to who, and where, and the politics of how the decision would be made within the governing structure these people had set up. It was fascinating. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the same time, the falcon, who had been following Sam since he arrived but rarely came close enough for polite conversation, flew down to Sam’s shoulder and said, quietly, “You shouldn’t be here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam tensed, “Am I in danger from anyone? The welcome here seems real enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you stay, you’ll turn, too. The process didn’t stop after all the residents transformed. Anyone who comes here and stays any amount of time turns to. Even ones who stayed a few days and then left while human, some of them come back days later as animals.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only some of them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My theory,” said the falcon, “is they all turned, and only some survived to get back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A shiver went down Sam’s spine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So has anyone turned back into a human?” Sam decides to ask to the conversation at large.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We tried, at first, of course we tried,” said Vanderbilt, “but almost a year later we still don’t even know how it happened, and have no clue how to change back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“After a while,” said Mike, the teenager who was a pig, “We just started to go along with life like this. We still gotta eat, still gotta prepare for winter, all of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was a spell, by the sorcerer like the kid says,” said the falcon. “It made us animals and made most people stop questioning it. Meet me outside of wherever you are in 3 hours and I’ll tell you more.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>After the cafeteria emptied out, Sam was shown a house in relatively good shape that he was welcome to sleep in. He picked out a bed, a fantastic luxury in some places, and at the house’s kitchen table he went through everything in his pack, maintaining everything, cleaning his guns, etc.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the hour came, he went outside and sure enough the falcon was watching from high above in a tree. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She flew down and landed near him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do I call you, friend?” he asked the bird.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I go by Red,” she said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, Red, what do you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that there is a power here that made us animals, and that that power can change us back. And that power demands offerings.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, what?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But before Sam could question it further, he was knocked over and pinned down by the mountain lion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re going to turn back into people, and you’re our offering to do it,” the cougar purred at him.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam is taken to be an "offering," but what will that entail, and who is he being brought to?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>BTB2020 fill for Self-Made Humans</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Sam was dragged for a time by a cougar tugging the back of his shirt, but eventually he convinced them to let him walk. Once on his feet, he tried to run for it but was tackled and pinned again immediately. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They let him up to walk, again, and this time he let them escort him further and further from the end of town he had seen so far. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His escort was the mountain lion, the falcon, a snake, and a large, black and gray wolf. The didn’t mind telling him, as  they walked, that they had figured out how to turn back into humans, but they needed someone who was in human form already to do it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Sam asked about being an offering, they said, “You’ll see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you going to kill me?” Was the offering a blood letting? Were they going to eat him in some hope that it would turn them human?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That depends on the mood of the sorcerer,” said the mountain lion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually they were in a hiking trail off in a nature area, and then a deerpath that was hardly a trail but which the animals had no problem with. The snake got tired along the way and asked if he would give him a ride. Sam supposed, between the cougar and the wolf, that he wasn’t going anywhere they weren’t allowing, and he didn’t read any close bond between these individuals. Possibly they were banding together out of desperation. In any case, he saw nothing to be gained by refusing the snake, and so allowed it to slither up him and make a ring around his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So how do you know this is going to work?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve seen it work,” said Red, the falcon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh? Did they leave after they changed back? Because I didn’t see any humans back in town.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The first one who became human and stayed eventually turned back into an animal. After that, each person who has succeeded has left.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t believe at first,” the snake said, but I saw it with my own eyes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saw every time,” said Red, but didn’t know who to tell who would believe me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m still waiting to see it,” grouched the wolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me too,” said the mountain lion, who didn’t look nearly as skeptical as the wolf. Sam supposed Red and the snake had recruited them as muscle to get the human offering to the cave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam wanted to know more, so much more, but suddenly a hush fell among them all as their little group came to a stop. They were in front of a cave. They had arrived.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“O great sorcerer,” called the wolf, “We have come as you have requested: A serpent, a wolf, and a man. And we beg you to restore us animals to our true selves!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who dares summon me?” came a booming, imperious voice from the cave. A familiar voice, Sam thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A humble trio of creatures beseeching you to be restored to human form, O great sorcerer!” said Red, “A mountain lion, a wolf, and a snake, with myself— a falcon— to speak for them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A trio?” Sam asked sotto voce. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The snake whispered in his ear, “Red doesn’t want to change back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam was having a hard time keeping up, but things got harder when the person the voice belonged to walked out of the cave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was Loki, the erstwhile brother of the friendly blonde guy Sam knew from Avengers parties, before the world turned upside down. The same Loki who had invaded Earth, attacked 3 cities, and could have leveled New York. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam was about to exclaim, but the snake around his neck sensed it and tightened its hold threateningly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki saw him, clearly recognized him, but didn’t acknowledge him any other way. Instead he said, “I see, good falcon, you have indeed come back as I bid you: with a serpent, wolf, and man. I didn’t really think you’d be able to do it again, much less with the precise set I asked for, but hats off to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Loki shook his shoulders back and looked like he was getting ready to do something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Which of you wishes to be restored to human-form?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me!” said the mountain lion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do!” said the wolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yess!” said the snake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki nodded. “Very well. I give you the ability to restore yourselves to your original form.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he said it he gestured to them with a sweep of his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To become human, say aloud, ‘I wish to be human’ and it will be so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Immediately the snake said, “I wish to be human” and suddenly a grown man was falling off Sam’s shoulders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shocked and delighted, the wolf and mountain lion did likewise and soon three naked people were standing outside the cave with Sam and Loki. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh, could we have some clothes?” asked the former-wolf, who was now a dashing silverfox man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carelessly, Loki flicked his hand and the three restored humans were suddenly dressed in nondescript pants and shirts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait a second,” said Sam, “I was the offering, and that was it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki shrugged. “The offering was an improbable combination: this time it was a serpent, a man, and a wolf. I picked it, inspired by the forms of some of my children.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The time before that,” said the man who used to be a snake, “it was a horse, a sea-creature, and a woman.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, thank you so much!” said the woman who used to be a mountain lion, who fell down in front of Loki. Loki looked put off by the display.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was your doing, my dear. You stretched your belief to include the falcon’s message, you assembled the combination of elements to meet my demands, and you said the words releasing yourself from the spell. Anyone could have done as much, had they chosen to.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam has found out who the sorcerer is, but why is Loki here, and what will come of this chance meeting?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>BTB2020 fill for the square Pansexual Acts</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three newly-restored humans headed off, discussing their plans for where they would head next, debating on whether they should show themselves to the rest of the population before leaving as their voices faded from Sam’s earshot.</p><p>Sam, meanwhile, remained where he stood, with sometimes-villain Loki 10 feet in front of him. </p><p>Sam crossed his arms. “Loki, huh?”</p><p>Loki looked at him shrewdly. </p><p>“We’ve yet to be introduced,” he said at last, extending his hand, “I am Loki, Son of Odin, brother of Thor, of Asgard, born of Jotunheim, refugee of two worlds.”</p><p>At the word ‘refugee’ Sam started. It had slipped his mind that Asgard had been obliterated. But that didn’t entirely explain why Loki was here, specifically.</p><p>“So you’ve been out here. On Earth, in the former United States of all places, and in a particularly wild and remote region of the US. In hiding?”</p><p>Loki looked aside bitterly.</p><p>“Anywhere in this chaotic land would do to hide myself from interstellar pursuers, as long as I could take care what magics I expended, but entities in your government seeking to capture me have induced me to keep out of notice.”</p><p>Sam was going to ask something else, but Loki changed the subject, “You must be hungry for real food, everyone who comes through these parts is, would you care to eat?”</p><p>It was almost midnight. Sam had eaten raw greens and boiled chicken at his dinner in the animal-town cafeteria, and it had been better than a lot of the meals he’d been served in the settlements he passed through, but if Loki was offering magically-procured food of his dreams, he was not going to turn that down. </p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Or would you care to sleep first? You must be tired.”</p><p>Now that he said it, Sam <em> was </em> tired. He was used to rising and sleeping with the sun, loosely, and it was rare he was up so late unless for dire circumstances. The adrenaline of being taken captive by large predators and taken into the woods as an “offering” had kept him going, but now that the rush was fading he could feel exhaustion weighing on him. </p><p>Nodding at Sam’s apparent assent, Loki beckoned Sam into his cave, which after a few turns he saw was equipped like a decent living space. Kitchen, bathroom, dining area, a bedroom with bed even more plush and luxurious looking than the one he had been offered by the town folk. </p><p>Without thinking, he walked forward, shucked his pants, shoved himself into bed under the covers, and was asleep. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>In the morning, he woke up with Loki spooning him from behind. He was in his shirt and boxers, and as far as he could tell Loki was in nothing. Strangely, this didn’t bother him. There was only one bed, Loki had offered it to him, and Sam had taken him up on it. Sam had certainly shared bed space before, in the military as well as in the last 2 years. It was an act of intimacy, in itself, but it didn’t have to mean anything other than what it was. </p><p>A little experimental shifting revealed Loki was still out like a light behind him. Sam slid out of bed, put his pants on, and went out the cave to sit on a big rock in the fresh morning air.</p><p>Before too long, he felt a presence come up beside him. </p><p>“That meal, that I offered you,” said Loki. As soon as he said it, Sam’s stomach growled and he realized he was ravenous. He turned a looked at Loki in a way he hoped wasn’t pleading. Loki merely gestured inside the cave.</p><p>“And would you like to join us?” Loki called into the trees.</p><p>Sam looked up and saw a raptor up above them. Red.</p><p>“I can hunt for my own mice, rabbits, and lizards,” she called from up above, “That’s all I seem to eat.”</p><p>“Well,” said Loki, gently, “I know you prefer to retain your falcon form into the future, but would you like to be human for the morning, to share our meal with us?”</p><p>Red suddenly dived down from the canopy heights to land on a branch at eye level with Loki. “You would turn me, and then let me turn back?”</p><p>“Better,” said Loki. Suddenly, quickly, Loki made several quick paces forward while darting a hand out, and tapped the falcon on her beak.</p><p>“Now you can change between human and falcon form as will, indefinitely. You’ll even be restored in whatever clothes you wear when you leave human form. Shall we break our fast?”</p><p>Red was hesitating but Sam followed Loki into the cave, and then sat at the dining table at Loki’s prompting. To Sam’s great surprise, Loki took himself to the kitchen and started putting ingredients on the counter. He then proceeded to make breakfast entirely by hand. </p><p>While the cooking was well underway, a slender woman with jet black hair came into the cave. Sam smiled to see her, happy she chose to take Loki up on his offer.</p><p>“Hi, Red,” he greeted, gently but warmly. </p><p>“Hi, Sam,” she said, shyly not quite meeting his eyes.</p><p>When Loki finally put the last platter on the table and there was eggs and bacon and pancakes and toast and coffee and juice, Sam was ready to feast, and feast he did, they all did. </p><p>During the meal Sam got the feeling that this was as special to Loki as it was to Sam, but for Loki it wasn’t the food. He was lonely, Sam realized, stuck out here, isolated from even fully using his powers.  </p><p>Over breakfast Sam had pleasant conversation with Loki as well as with Red, who was a shy soul being just as tentative and careful as Loki. </p><p>Sam enjoyed himself enough that when Loki offered for Sam to stay with him a few days, before carrying on his way, Sam agreed, and Red did as well. A few days turned into a few weeks, and before long they were not only genially cohabiting, they were all sleeping together. </p><p>It was unlooked for and unexplainable by Sam to himself in a normal-times-oriented mindset, but so many things were different in the new normal of the post-American wasteland. Trust was a rare thing, intimacy hard to come by and was often a desperate union of two people longing for any break from cold, unforgiving distance and isolation. So Sam had had sex with a number of people and in a number of circumstances he would not have seen coming back in the before times.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>